Article excerpt

The worst is over as Arthur leaves Maritimes

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HALIFAX - The remnants of a post-tropical storm Arthur were moving out of Atlantic Canada late Sunday as an official at the Canadian Hurricane Centre said the worst is over, but the system's aftermath was going to affect many residents well into Monday.

The New Brunswick government announced on Sunday that all of its offices in the Fredericton-area would be closed Monday due to clean up issues and power outages caused by Arthur.

New Brunswick Power reported late Sunday that more than 100,000 customers in the province remained without power, nearly half in the provincial capital region. Nova Scotia Power's website listed more than 65,000 outages.

Environment Canada lifted all storm warnings over land in the Atlantic region in the wake of the potent storm, which brought with it near-hurricane strength winds and torrential rains across the Maritimes.

"The storm has weakened significantly from 12 hours ago," Chris Fogarty, manager of Canada's Halifax-based hurricane centre, said Sunday afternoon. "Most of the impacts are over, with just a few heavy showers lingering in Newfoundland. They do have some gusty winds there, but nothing like we saw yesterday."

Forecasters predicted strong winds of up to 70 kilometres an hour would linger around Cape Breton on Sunday, but only five-to-10 millimetres of rainfall was expected for Newfoundland, concentrated mostly on the Avalon Peninsula.

Environment Canada downgraded the weather system from hurricane status right before it slammed into the Maritimes on Saturday morning, but the storm still packed a punch, drenching parts of New Brunswick, toppling trees and knocking out power for more than a quarter-million people at its peak intensity.

Fogarty noted that while downgrading a hurricane to a post-tropical storm may mean a decrease in the most extreme wind and rain conditions, the transformation often significantly expands the overall area affected by the storm and can often mean an increase in its total energy.